Familia is a personal, historical, and anthropological analysis of the social content of the human migration process. Emphasized here are the familial and other personal factors that the author argues are critical in explaining where, why, and when people relocated. Other scholars have also suggested a relationship between kinship, family, and regionalism, and the migration patterns and routes that link origins in Mexico with eventual destinations in the United States, but Alvarez’s work is unique in its meticulous use of historical and anthropological methodologies to illustrate the relevance of parentesco, compadrazgo, and other networks of kin and pseudokin relations to regional migration in a fixed period. The credibility and utility of Alvarez’s approach to immigration is enhanced because it is conceptually wed to a solid and voluminous body of social anthropological literature which has documented the pivotal importance of kinship and family in Mexican-American communities and neighborhoods.
Familia is not without visible blemishes, some cosmetic, some more serious. It shows all the strengths and weaknesses of a case study methodology. The author leaves it to the reader to decide how well or how poorly the narratives of the five or six core families chronicled here relate to an infinitely larger, more complex immigration process. Extracts from interviews such as one with a surviving pioneer immigrant, Loreto Márquez, who is quoted extensively in Familia, are alive with the affection, respect, and adoration that the author feels for his subjects. Yet, at the same time, the author’s dependence on block quotes to carry his argument leaves the reader with the more substantive task of interpretation and analysis. Put another way, Alvarez is mining a rich vein in Familia, but he requires the reader (like the young Loreto Márquez in another era) to perform the arduous chore of separating worthless rock from precious metal.
Even with its faults, students of immigration, regional Mexican history, or Mexican-American studies will find Familia interesting and useful. Producing a work that is both an anthropological case study and a narrative micro or regional history, the author has used new and unique primary sources to fashion a scholarly work that transcends the mundane boundaries of the academic disciplines.
